Talk about not getting past the first 5 minutes....

A couple of weeks ago, the History Channel aired Tombstone--a movie I had never seen because of its MPAA rating. I enjoyed it and later watched its counterpart, Wyatt Earp. If the directors could have put these two movies together somehow, it would have made a great film. Kevin Costner's portrayal of Wyatt Earp was better than Kurt Russell's performance in Tombstone, but Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday in Tombstone was better than Dennis Quaid's. But I'm straying from my story, as I often do. Wyatt Earp was well, a jerk with a gun. At the time of the famous shootout at the OK Corral, he was married to a former and sometimes not so former prostitute named Mattie Blaylock who was also a narcotic addict. Now there's a gal to take home to mom, huh? In Tombstone, he met Josephine Marcus who was a show business person. Show business people at that time were not known for having high moral standards. Earp had an affair with her and when Mattie died of a drug overdose he supposedly married Josephine and they were together over 40 years. I tell you these facts to tell you the next story. In my newfound interest in the wild west, I got a movie off Netflix entitled "I Married Wyatt Earp", a movie that said it was based on the memoirs of Josephine Marcus. So I turned the movie on and immediately was overpowered by pain. In this 1983 made for tv movie tale, Marie Osmond plays the part of Josephine Marcus. Come again? Marie Osmond? Okie dokie. This is painful but I'll keep watching. In this movie, Josie was part of traveling operatic group. A group of innocent looking singing girls making their way across the country bring culture to the less fortunate. After a performance at the Birdcage Theater in Tombstone, Josie returns to the hotel room she shares with the other girls as if it's one big slumber party and they're all squealing to hear about dinner with Sheriff Behan and the note from the admirer, Wyatt Earp. Oh my goodness, what delicious, romantic, girlie, slumber party fun! Wyatt Earp's note for Marie/Josie is to come work as a regular performer at his establishment, the Oriental and Josie thinks that she might like to be the headliner at such a fine establishment. This is where I turned it off. I gave the movie over 20 minutes to materialize into something that was not so clearly wrong and painful. I JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!! The historical inaccuracy was just too much for me to bear.

1)Josie Marcus was not an innocent opera singer bringing culture to the less fortunate. She was a show business person who embodied the same morals or lack thereof that other show people had. Case in point: she had an affair with a married man. In fact, though there is no evidence that she was a prostitute, many history scholars think she might have been.

2) the Birdcage Theater was NOT an opera house or center for the fine arts. Thanks to another History Channel program, it was revealed that the balconies of the Birdcage were specially outfitted to afford "gentlemen" and their prostitutes some privacy for activity of their own during a show.

3)The Oriental was a saloon. It was a place for gambling, drinking and whoring not an opera house or center for the fine arts. Earp ran a gambling table there when he wasn't marshalling or killing or whoring or whatever. In the wild west, a woman who may have suddenly found herself single (through the husband's untimely death) had very few ways to support herself financially. She might take in laundry and work long hours for little pay, or she might become a dancehall girl and not have to work as hard. Dancehall girls eventually became prostitutes. Entertainment at the Oriental would more than likely have involved these would-be whores.

4)Let's not forget who Wyatt Earp really was. He was more or less an outlaw with a badge. He had been a horse thief which he would have been hanged for back in the day. In Dodge City he married his prostitute, Mattie Blaylock who sometimes still worked to bring money into the household. As as married man, he had an affair with Josie Marcus. This isn't even including the number of people, criminal or not, that met their end by Earp's gun.

Rest assured, on my next trip to the library I will be seeking out a copy of Josephine Marcus' memoirs entitled, "I Married Wyatt Earp" to see what that story is all about. I'd be interested to see how much the 1983 made for tv movie got wrong besides the error of casting Marie Osmond. As much as I despise Marie Osmond and want to punch the next person who says she's a good representative and ambassador of the state of Utah and the LDS church, she did not belong in this role. I gave this movie more than 5 minutes and because of that, I'll spend a lot of recovery time with some of my movies that have absolutely NOOO historical significance or value. Now where did I put that copy of Starsky and Hutch?